Product Description
Bradbury 13 is a collection of 13 radio dramas masterfully adapted from classic short stories by veteran science-fiction author Ray Bradbury. Bradbury's stories refract our own fears and foibles through otherworldly prisms. Each dramatization is approximately thirty minutes long and includes original music. This collection includes the following:

A Sound of ThunderTime Safari, Inc., offers hunting enthusiasts the chance of a lifetime: the opportunity to travel back in time to bag the biggest trophy of all time, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the ''Thunder Lizard.''
Dark They Were and Golden EyedHarry Bittering is resigned to the idea of living on Mars for a while with his family, until a nuclear war back on Earth strands the settlers forever. Now, will Mars devour the earthlings?
The Happiness MachineAn old man builds the ultimate machine, a ''happiness machine'', which is meant to make anyone who enters it happy. But the most important person in his life is not amused!
The Fox and the ForestEscaping war in the year 2155, a couple flees back in time to twentieth-century Mexico, a paradise compared to their world of disease bombs and widespread horror. But they are being tracked by those who want them to return.
Here There Be TygersProspectors from Earth travel to a world that seems to know of their hearts' desires, and makes their every wish come true. But a member of the crew has darker desires, and pays the ultimate price.
KaleidoscopeA routine space flight suddenly ends in a huge explosion, throwing the crew into space with only their space suits and radios to keep them alive. Knowing rescue is impossible, they face their innermost demons.
The ManThe captain and crew of a ship land on a planet to make first contact, only to discover their thunder has been stolen by a previous visitor.
Night Call, CollectThe lone survivor of a rocket crew on Mars has waited his lifetime to be rescued and taken back to Earth. Then one day when he is 80 years old, his telephone rings!
The Screaming WomanNine-year-old Margaret Leary is playing in a field by her house, when suddenly she hears a woman screaming for help from the ground! Can she get anyone to believe her?
There Was an Old WomanOld Aunt Tildy is shocked and angry to find a mortician has come to take her to the mortuary. How dare he put her body in an old wicker basket! She's still using it!
The VeldtA wealthy couple builds the ultimate virtual playroom for their spoiled children, complete with an African savanna and man-eating lions. It is so real, you can even smell the lions' last meal.
The WindWhere does the wind come from? Is it ''born'' somewhere? Is it intelligent? A terrified man seems to know all about the wind and who it seems to be after.
The RavineA strangler has been terrifying a small town by murdering single women. Will the dark and mysterious ravine be enough to save Lavinia and her friends from the ''Lonely One''? ... Read more

Product Description
In Something Wicked This Way Comes, two teenaged boys try to save the souls of the town when a "dark carnival" sets up its frightening attractions. In A Sound of Thunder, a safari company transports adventurers back in time to hunt animals, but one foolish hunter upsets the plan, and with it, the course of the future. ... Read more

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Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. They are wonderful.

Now his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.
Amazon.com Review
The Avram Davidson Treasury may be the most satisfying short-storycollection of the decade. Davidson (1923-1993), one of science fiction andfantasy's greatest writers, was "a master shaper of small stories," writesAlan Dean Foster in his introduction to "Or the Grasses Grow." Foster isjoined in introducing the stories by dozens of extraordinary authors,including Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, andmany others. Davidson was clearly adored, and often emulated, despite hisreputation for being somewhat curmudgeonly. His mastery of language wasexquisite, and his stories glittered like diamonds. Each of the 38 tales inthis collection spanning five decades is a self-contained wonderland. Oneof the most famous (and most often plagiarized) short stories in sciencefiction appears here: "Or All the Seas with Oysters," tells of slightlysinister safety pin pupae, coat hanger larvae, and bicycle adults in aworld where machines are more than they seem.

Of "Dagon," John Clute writes, "It is as vicious as the world of a fish,and wise. It is masterly.... it cannot be read. It can only be re-read." Onthe surface, this is the story of an American military officer in Peking in1945, but lurking underneath are ancient gods, Chinese magicians, and theobscene torpor of hell. As Ray Bradbury writes in his afterword, "Many ofthese stories are complete mysteries, puzzles. Avram Davidson starts us ina fog and lets us orient ourselves slowly.... His knack for a proper paceis that of a true teller of tales." But all of Davidson's stories aren'tdark--far from it. He was a satirical genius, able to poke fun at sacredcows and turn a comic phrase with the best of them. Some of these storieswill make you laugh out loud.

To the fan of great literary short fiction: Don't skip over this deeplyfulfilling treasury because Avram Davidson was "only" a science fictionauthor. He's been compared to Rudyard Kipling, Saki, John Collier, and G.K.Chesterton, if you need a literary excuse.

And to the science fiction or fantasy fan: This amazing and creative Hugo,Edgar, and World Fantasy Award winner, nominated for seven NebulaAwards by his fellow writers, will astound and amaze you. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Priceless
When I read a particularly good short story I look back and try to imprint the author's name on my memory (nowadays with mixed results).As far as science fiction & fantasy goes, the first time this happened was with a story by Avram Davidson, many years ago.As time went by I would notice his name on several memorable works.To say he had a style all his own is not quite right, since he actually had several styles, all fascinating.What I didn't know until fairly recently was that AD was surprisingly obscure, considering his amazing talent and prolificacy (try searching for his work on Amazon).

This collection brings together much of his finest short stories.Each one is chosen and introduced by another writer - Avram was evidently an author's author.While I probably would have made a few different choices, I was grateful to be able to experience many excellent works that I had never seen before.Chances are, even if you're an old Davidson fan, you'll find a few stories that are new to you as well.You would have to search far and wide - and at great expense - to replicate this compilation.

The collection is too long and varied to elaborate on the individual pieces, but suffice it to say, reading Davidson is a real joy.The quality of the story and the effortless technique are something you will see very rarely.The downside of reading a collection like this (are there any like this?) is that it spoils you.Afterwards, most other writers seem flat and uninspired by comparison.

A writer writers will never read, alas
I hate some of the stories in this book; the remainder leave me gibbering with awestruck, overwhelmed delight. The specific stories a reader might revile or adore (or both) will vary. It's a huge, manifold collection of shorts by one of the best writers in English from...

OK, I'm hesitant to say, "the last century" or "the century recently passed", partly because that's awfully goofy, and partly because I'm not near well-read enough to make such claims with authority. I'm gonna say it anyway. I stumbled upon a copy of a long out of print and svelter collection of Davidson's work (Or All The Seas With Oysters...) at fourteen and I've never been quite the same. He's not the writer whose works I wish I could have written: he is the writer whose works I would have wished I could have written had I been the writer I wished I could have been.

(we see why a writer I am not, Yoda knowingly says)

Davidson had a dear whimsy, a weariness, and a bite that was, dare I say it, very Jewish. When I (re)read his stories I feel as if I (an agnostic Gentile) have magically been allowed to understand & overhear the Yiddish folk yarns the kindly, crusty grandfather spins for the kids while the middle generation shouts in the background.

Davidson wrote as well as Singer. Perhaps better, at his best. No small praise; I know what I am claiming. Do not allow my muddy writing dissuade any reader from buying and luxuriating in this important collection.

Avram Davidson Treasury is readers delight.
As a long-term reader of science fiction and an admirer of the writings of Avram Davidson the publication of this particular book was, for me, a noteworthy event. I was able to renew my acquaintance with some of the delightful stories I had first read ten to twenty-five years ago. Each story is preceded by a thoughtful introduction by author friends of the late Mr. Davidson. I found these short essays generally very helpful since most of the writers maintained a correspondence with AD and could provide personal insights and biographical data related to the stories.

The 38 stories are grouped chronologically by the decade in which they were published; Fifties to Nineties. I noticed that the excellent Ray Bradbury afterward had been used as an introduction to another out-of-print AD collection, Strange Seas and Shores, Doubleday, 1971.

My only grouse is that I wish the editors had included a listing of the titles of AD books, novels and short story collections. Thank you editors Silverberg and Davis, a beautiful book and a fitting tribute to "one of the finest short story writers ever to use the English language"...Robert Silverberg.

Quirky, lovely, some of the best short fantasy ever
Avram Davidson died in 1993. He was, as so often said, one of the great originals. His writing was elegant and complex: always adapted to the voices of his narrators and characters, always at some level humorous even when telling a dark story. He was one of those writers whose stories were always enjoyable just for wallowing in the prose: for its sprung rhythms and fine, out of the way, images. And his stories were enjoyable for wallowing in the atmosphere: for its evocation of exotic place-times, whether it be late '50s New York City or early '70s Belize or turn of the century Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania or far future Barnum's Planet, and for its evocation of exotic world-views, and the packing and repacking of wondrous, seemingly inconsequential (though rarely truly so) tidbits of history and unhistory into the backgrounds. And his best stories took these characteristics and harnessed them in the service of well-honed themes or (sometimes) clever plots.

This collection is organized as a retrospective, with the selections placed in order of first appearance. This is, I think, an excellent choice for any collection of this magnitude in that it allows the interested reader to try to track evolutions in the writer's style and thematic concerns over time. (I would suggest, perhaps, that the older Davidson was more prone to explorations of esoterica than the younger, and less often openly angry. Throughout his career he was ready with the comic touch, even in the midst of a darker context. His style was always special, but perhaps grew more involved as he grew older.)

Another feature of this collection is the introductions, by many of Davidson's friends: mostly fellow authors and editors, but also his bibliographer, Henry Wessels, and his son. This represent a significant chunk of "value added": they include some personal reminiscences, some analyses of the work, some elegiac passages. I'll add that the book is nicely and elegantly put together, and that editors Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis (as well as Tor in-house editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden) deserve thanks and applause for working to bring us this book.

But, of course, there is no Avram Davidson Treasury without the stories Avram Davidson wrote, of which 38 are assembled here. And the stories are the only real reason to buy and exult in this book. I'm a big Davidson fan, make no mistake: I come to this review not at all objective, and having reading all but a few of the stories already, many of them several times. At least one, "The Sources of the Nile", is firmly on my personal list of the best SF stories of all time.

There is not space to discuss the delightful stories herein contained. Suffice it to say that this collection is big enough, and varied enough, to whet the appetite of any reader whose ear can be tuned to catch the strains of Davidson's voice. And even this large collection inevitably leaves out many fine stories (the other Eszterhazy and Limekiller stories, "The Lord of Central Park", many more), to say nothing of his engaging collection of essays, Adventures in Unhistory, in which he discusses at length many obscure legends, and their possible bases in fact. So buy it and read it, and very likely you will find yourself searching out the out of print and small press books which house the rest of his work (for now), and very likely too you will be hoping with the rest of us Davidson lovers for a few more treasures to be dug from his papers.

much better than Stephen King
Still targets a squarely middle brow audience. Also, seems very dated,rooted in the '50's.

Most of the stories are of the "TwilightZone"/"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" form and structure. I.e.,creepy setting, followed by twist ending. And this is more of a fantasy andsupernatural book than science fiction.

There is a lot of erudition ondisplay here, but it is the fussy, showy kind often displayed by theautodidact. The pace and economy of some of the stories suffer becauseunnecessary erudition is packed in with everything else. ... Read more

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Eighteen stories by Bradbury, follows after The Martian Chronicles. ... Read more

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Over the course of a storied literary career that has spanned more than half a century, Ray Bradbury has taken us to wonderful places: across vast oceans to foreign lands, onto summer porches of small-town America, through dark and dangerous forests where predators wait, into the hypnotic mists of dream, back to a halcyon past to remember, forward into an exhilarating future, and rocketing through outer space.

Customer Reviews (16)

P is for Paris?A Fun Collection from Bradbury!
This was quite a collection of various Bradbury stories.Some are fantasy, some are interesting to look at and think about and others are pure science fiction.What I like about Bradbury's stories are the people inside them.He develops his characters, each with their own quirky personalities and mixes them into interesting, provocative character sketches.

Other authors have done the same thing; Bradbury though puts it together in ways that get you to think and respond and to care about these characters.I won't go through all the stories nor create a table of contents (boring!) but just some of the tales that have impacted me.

We'll Always Have Paris (of course the line from the Bogart film Casablanca) is no cloak & dagger tale.It's about a man who has a run-in with a complete stranger - it's not a gay love exactly, but you can see the two men interact, be fascinated with each other and then go off with a memory.It's like being sidetracked off of what you were doing and then coming back to reality with a "Huh, what do you know about that?" feeling.

Ma Perkins Comes to Stay is about a lonely woman whose husband is constantly away from home.To keep herself entertained, she turns on the radio.Except the radio characters come to life for her so vividly that they begin to appear in the livingroom!Here's Ma Perkins baking cookies!(She was an old radio show drama program.)The husband comes home: "Who's this woman in the kitchen?"Interesting, fun human drama.He busts the radios to prevent them from coming.[SPOILER] He even tries to murder Ma Perkins and is somewhat surprised to find the body of a dead old woman on his hands.When he tries to explain to the police she's imaginary, they don't buy it.

Unpillow Talk was cute.A man and a woman "spoil it" by having sex, thus destroying their friendship as it moves to a new level.Except they don't want to do that, they want to continue to be friends.Was it the champagne? Was it the candlelight dinner that did them in?Very cute story.

Fly Away Home, about astronauts on Mars and how they try to recreate a bit of Earth as they suffer from the loneliness of explorers on the Red Planet.Very akin to The Martian Chronicles (another great space tale by Bradbury).

Overall a great little collection of about 22 stories that don't really fit in with the regular Bradbury lexicon - and that's ok!Recommended.

Ray's gay?
Surprised by the title story where a married American man prowls the streets of Paris at night and has an intimate encounter with a French joyboy: "blond and quite handsome."

Whoa!This is Republican-voting-traditional-values Bradbury???

(BTW, the book's dedicated to his "lifetime friend," Donald Harkins, "who is buried in Paris."Was that Ray's "partner"?)

Unfortunately, it's the only thing that's remotely interesting about this book.Don't get me wrong.I think Ray is an American icon.But he seems to be phoning it in these days.Case in point: "The Murder."A story with a fantastic premise -- one guy bets another that he can make the guy commit murder.The guy who suggests the bet has a body full of scars from bullets and knives!But then it all fizzles out in a too-abrupt ending with no development of the idea or the characters.Serious let-down.Honestly, I couldn't read all the stories as I got tired of being disappointed.None would've past muster with an editor had they been written by anyone else.You can flip through any genre mag on the newsstand and find stories by "amateurs" that are many times better crafted.

One good thing -- good to see Ray's got a liberal-bent, making a sympathetic portrayal of a gay man.Unfortunately though his political stances are screwy.But that's another story.

Get Weird, Get Wonderful
It's like poetry the way Ray Bradbury conveys so much in so few words. His writing is delicate yet resounding, lighthearted yet pensive, simple yet wonderful. The stories in "We'll Always Have Paris" will charm, delight, and provoke imagination. Many of stories left me with a satisfied feeling as if the last 10 pages I read were instead a gooey chocolate cupcake that is now sitting happily inside my stomach. From twilight golf to the Martian highlands to tennis romance to ladies in radios, Bradbury covers a wide spectrum of trivial, weird, and wacky. A few times, a story did make me scratch my head and go, "What just happened?" but for the most part, this book was a liberating and enjoyable read.

Classic,solid Bradbury
Bradbury continues to write to write witty, somewhat askew stories which now test the waters of Post-modernism. They donot have the impact of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COME; or FAHRENHEIT 4 5 1 but contain the magic of the Ray Bradbury touch("The Last Laugh";"Ma Perkins Comes to Stay").
If you're a fan you will like/love the collection. If You're a novice start, perhaps, with DARK CARNIVAL OR "QUICKER THAN THE EYE; or "I Sing the Body Electric".
Bradbury is our greatest tale teller and a true world master of fantastic literature.These works will convince you that lit is alive and well.

Inventory for the clearance-sale bin
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS is described on the dust-jacket as "a new collection of never-before-published stories ... with prose that soars and sings." Puhleeze! This volume should never have gone to print. It's composed of short stories - some very short - that author Ray Bradbury perhaps culled from yellowed composition books surviving from high school and/or college days (Writing Skills 1A).

The twenty-two offerings in this book generally run the gamut from amateurish ("Ma Perkins Comes to Stay") to incomprehensible ("Doubles") to just plain stupid ("Pater Caninus"). For me, most of them fell into the Why Bother? category. The one stab at science fiction, "Fly Away Home", while containing a good concept at its core, is hopelessly outdated. Only one, "Arrival and Departure", is passably intriguing (3 stars). In it, an aged couple discovers that the monotonous comfort and familiarity that derive from forty-five years of marriage are not easily displaced.

Famous and accomplished authors should resist the pressure from publishers to trot-out old jottings for the purpose of milking the reading public for a few more dollars.

You know those bins at the used-book stores marked "3 for $1"? WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS is best lumped there with the other bookshelf residue. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

Decent collection, but not Bradbury's best
I have read many sci-fi short stories, and by far Bradbury's are often my favorites. This collection though, I consider sub par. It is jumbled and some of the stories aren't even sci-fi are seem out of place. The collection has many great stories, but I don't recommend it to people new to Bradbury; if you haven't read "The Illustrated Man", I suggest it over this collection.

Not Bradbury at his Best
I would like to note, as have some other reviewers, that I am working from the 18 story collection. It saddens me to say this, but these stories are a far cry from some of Bradbury's other material, and hardly worth the time for modern readers. Bradbury has an unnerving tendancy in his short stories to be one-dimensional, hokey, and heavy-handed; all these characteristics are on display in this collection. Also, I am willing to forigive his portraits of women in some of his earlier work, but these stories date as late as the 1960s, and Bradbury has to learn to write women in ways that are not hysterical or conniving.

While there are moments when Bradbury is able to recapture some of the awe and beauty of his earlier work, much of this is, sadly, sentimental hackery. Stories like "Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine" and "The Man in the Rorscharch Shirt" are so obvious and dull as to be difficult to finish reading. "Tomorrow's Child" is so absolutely ridiculous and wrong-headed that is almost makes a person angry. I've read quite a bit of Bradbury, and this was the first book of his where I have had trouble reaching the end. "The Inspired Chicken Motel" is the one bright spot, I felt, where Bradbury manages to stumble into a father and son's shared sense of wonder, and their desire to believe in some kind cosmic meaning, revealed in an omen. Other than that, the stories are rote and uninspiring.

There is plenty of great Bradbury out there; I love Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. All those books are worth owning. But not everything Bradbury ever wrote is genius, and certainly not _I Sing the Body Electric!_

Ray Bradbury -- untalented, or merely incompetent?
In the fifth edition of "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians", the article on Rachmaninov affirms that the popularity of his works is proof they aren't very good. By that reasoning, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms must be even worse composers.

But there is _some_ truth to the idea that popularity and "quality" are inversely related. Ray Bradbury, arguably the most popular 20th century writer of fantasy and science fiction, is a perfect example. Bradbury is a writer for people who have no imaginations of their own.

I read a lot of science fiction when I was young. (Fantasy had not become as popular as it is today.) By a wide margin, no writer struck me as consistently awful as Bradbury.

Why? None was quite so _obvious_ -- Bradbury telegraphed his punches in the titles of his stories! His treatment of any idea was often heavy-handed and sentimental. And he claimed priority for any work with even the least resemblance to one of his (qv, "The Foghorn" and "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms"). I don't know whether "Boys, Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Basement!" predates Philip K. Dick's "The Father-Thing", but if it had, Bradbury surely would have sued.

It's about time (while Mr. Bradbury is still alive) to proclaim him the semi-competent mediocrity he is. There, I said it. He also needs a kick to the knees for his inane use ofWhitman's "I sing the body electric", a reference to human sensuality and sexuality, to title a story about an asexual, unsensual android.

I sing the body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

I find it amazing Ray Harryhausen has put up with him for 70 years.

"I Sing The Additional Grip/Electric!"
(Please note that the edition I am reviewing is the older publication that contains only the original 18 works that make up I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!.)

I usually adore Ray Bradbury short story collections, but I think it would be more honest of me to say that I "merely" very much enjoyed I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!.While I wouldn't rank this as his best work, it contains a number of seductively powerful moments.It's a wonderful set of quite varied fiction, however not all of the stories gave me the same emotional charge that I get out of other selections of Bradbury's writing.It's still a compilation worth reading, of course, since even Bradbury on a mediocre day is still better than the vast majority of short story writers.

As with other Bradbury collections, it is difficult to characterize the feel of this.The stories cover a smorgasbord of topics; included are stories about Mars colonies, Irish peasants, supernatural chickens, electric grandmothers, and a host of other mind-bending fictions.You have to admire his creativity if nothing else.And he has a fantastic way of making even the most bizarre of artifacts seem as familiar as apple pie and the smell of freshly cut grass.His characters are painted with broad strokes, but they're so carefully crafted that you'll feel as though you've known them all your life.

Some of my favorite Bradbury stories are his most basic and uncomplicated ones, I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! being no exception.THE KILIMANJARO DEVICE is a simple tribute to Ernest Hemmingway written with a deceptive elegance.The science fiction overtones of DOWNWIND FROM GETTYSBURG, THE LOST CITY OF MARS and the titular story mask some very real human emotions.In some stories, youth and old age are brought together, with childlike enthusiasm touching characters at all points during their lives.In other stories, depression and gloom are all-encompassing and inescapable.

On the other hand, there are a few stories that I just didn't care for.And I must admit that the poem at the end (CHRISTUS APOLLO) did very little for me.Still, it's testament to Bradbury's ability as a writer that the poorest stories can only fill me with mild indifference.Very little here blew me away in the manner of his DANDELION WINE book, but there is nothing that I would refuse to read again.

I enjoyed I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! during my initial read.But I found myself appreciating the stories even more the second time around.Bradbury excels at painting the whole spectrum of humanity, from the most noble to its most pathetic.And he turns both extremes into very compelling stories.This is probably not his greatest collection, but it is definitely not one to be skipped.

Wonderful!
When I was about 14, I went through a several year phase of reading every science fiction book I could get my hands on.And now, fifteen years later, I decided to go back and try to read a few of the books I remembered.I especially remember enjoying books by Asimov, Bradbury, Dick, Wells and a few others.This was the first one I happened to read, and I was amazed.The first few stories were kind of 'iffy', but I was quickly pulled into each and every story.Ray Bradbury has a writing talent that few today can replicate.His mastery of words and his imagination are amazing.

I've read a few 'modern' sci-fi, and they've all failed to impress me.The true wonder of sci-fi is in books like this.Sure some of the ideas are out-dated, but who cares?It is science-fiction.Stephen King and the others I read didn't seem to capture the wonder that is in books like this.

I know that some prefer modern sci-fi, but for me, the 'oldies' are where the great science-fiction lies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

book purchase
I was very happy with my purchase! It arrived promptly and in good condition. Thanks! ... Read more

Product Description

In this lavishly illustrated labor of love, Jerry Weist -- Sotheby's fantasy and science fiction collectibles expert and longtime Ray Bradbury friend and collector -- gives us a unique "visual biography," a one-of-a-kind celebration of the life, career, and genius of one of America's most beloved literary giants.

The works of Ray Bradbury have been read and revered for more than half a century. The winner of countless awards and accolades, including a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, he has left a deeper, more enduring imprint on our times than most writers of his or any generation. The source of The Martian Chronicles, father of The Illustrated Man, and master brewer of Dandelion Wine, Bradbury has penned stories, novels, stage plays, and screenplays that have long demonstrated the limitlessness of the human imagination and pure power of the word.

Bradbury: An Illustrated Life features magazine illustrations, movie stills and posters, comic book art, letters, scripts, book jackets, and paintings -- all expertly selected and insightfully explained -- that trace an incomparable artist's journey through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Here also are rare and illuminating gems from some of his renowned compatriots and collaborators, including excerpts from the journal of legendary director Fran ois Truffaut, written during the making of the motion picture version of Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451.

Customer Reviews (8)

Great Bradbury Visual Anthology
What can I say?Historically an important book for Bradbury fans but also a visual feast for anyone and everyone!

Mars is Heaven!
Now that Sam Weller's "The Bradbury Chronicles:the Life of Ray Bradbury" is selling like water at the bookshops,we'll see the importance of Jerry Weist's "BRADBURY,AN ILLUSTRATED LIFE,A JOURNEY TO METAPHOR".I didn't read yet Weller's book,but I know that Frederik Pohl didn't like it.Iown a copy of "Bradbury,an illustrated life...", since it appeared.And I loved it.What a gorgeous "objet d'art"!The ailing Bradbury must be proud to have inspired a book as beautiful-and good-as this one.The text by Jerry Weist is well written,professional,competent.The Foreword,by Bradbury's archivist ,collector and friend,Donn Albright,is very informative about a few ofBradbury's illustrators.The Introduction,penned by Bradbury himself,is enlightening.
As an admirer of Science-Fiction illustration andcollector of SF Memorabilia ,this work was a visual feast to my eyes ,taste and, sensibility.
Called my attention:firstly,the reproductions of book and magazine(AMAZING STORIES,WONDER STORIES QUARTERLY)covers,interior illustrations,movie stills and posters(the famous one-sheet poster for the silent "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" and the glorious six-sheet poster designed for William Cameron Menzies's/H.G.Wells's "THINGS TO COME")and the Sunday comic strips(TARZAN,BUCK ROGERS),that influenced Bradbury's visual taste and literary preferences.Secondly,the reproductions of publications(fanzines)like IMAGINATION and FUTURIA FANTASIA(with Bradbury as editor)that enriched his beginnings as a science-fiction fan ,nurturing his creative juices and his friendship with the futuregreat illustrator Hannes Bok,plus the moving photos made when Ray was visiting New York City during the (First)1939 WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION financed by his buddy Forrest J. Ackerman, or made in Los Angeles ,like the amazing photo showing a youthful Ray at ameeting of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society(LASFS) in 1940,when nineteen-year-old Bradbury was just beginning his writing career.This photo is sensational because it shows us other famous(now)members of the LASFS:FORREST J. ACKERMAN,MOROJO,RAY HARRYHAUSEN,ARTHUR K. BARNES,EDWARD E. "DOC" SMITH,CHARLES HORNIG,ROBERT HEINLEIN(seated at the table,only his face showing).Also appearingin the photo :JACK WILLIAMSON and EDMOND HAMILTON(standing near the wall in the background).The other photograph that moved me wastaken(circa 1946/47)probably in Los Angeles, too. In this one , Ray appears side by side with the couple EDMOND HAMILTON/LEIGH BRACKETT and with Hamilton's sister.Thirdly,I was enraptured by the exquisite beauty of the interior B&W drawings(Oh,the marvelous B&W drawings by HANNES BOK,LEE BROWN COYE,BORIS DELGOV, VIRGIL FINLAY&LAWRENCE STERN STEVENS) illustrating Bradbury's stories in pulp magazines ;the outstanding colour paintings printed as illustrations for Bradbury's stories in the 'slicks'(ESQUIRE,THE SATURDAY EVENING POST,COLLIER'S,and so on).His stories(for instance,"A Sound of Thunder","The Beast from 20000 Fathoms","The Illustrated Man" and "Mars is Heaven")were,then, interpreted by great artists like STANLEY MELTZOFF,REN WICKS,JAMES R. BINGHAM&JAMES BAMA;the futuristic cover designs for Hardcovers ,like GEORGE BARROWS'S Arkham House(American edition) and MICHAEL AYRTON'S Hamish Hamilton(British edition) cover designs for "DARK CARNIVAL",ARTHUR LIDOV'S cover illustration for "THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES"(1950)and JOSEPH MUGNAINI'S cover painting for the british edition(1963)of "SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES";the catching paperback's covers for the BANTAM edition of"THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES"(1951)and the BALLANTINE editions of "FARENHEIT 451" &"THE OCTOBER COUNTRY"(1953&1956 respectively,both JOSEPH MUGNAINI'S covers).Deserve special mention the series of JOSEPH MUGNAINI'S(1912-1992) litographs,preliminary watercolor sketches,original B&W drawings andpaintings inspired by Bradbury's stories and books.The italian-bornMUGNAINI wasconsidered the best interpreter of Ray's dreams.
Finally,the chapter dealing with 'EC COMICS and Ray Bradbury:The Untold Story' is precious.Jerry Weist is in his terrain here.As he says in the opening of the chapter:"The story of how Ray Bradbury came to have his writing adapted by a small,energetic company named Entertaining Comics in the 1950's is now a legendary chapter of comics history".How very true this is.I was enchanted by fantastic reproductions of originalsby FRANK FRAZETTA,AL WILLIAMSON,AL FELDSTEIN(his recreations are amazing).And it is always rewarding for me to admire the fabulous adaptations&splash-page arwork by the great WALLACE(WALLY)WOOD,a real genius of the comics.'Last,but not least' I was thrilled reading and seeing the archive of photos and Film Memorabilia reproduced.My favorites:the promotional photographs of Ray with the lovely Barbara Rush during the production of "IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE"(Universal,1953);the Half-sheet &Insert posters & Window lobby cardfor the same film and the known(signed)One-sheet poster for "THE BEAST FROM 20.000 FATHOMS" .
Many years ago I saw "THE BEAST FROM 20.000 FATHOMS" at an old movie theatre in my home town.It was an unforgettableexperience for me.A few years later ,I read the famous Bradbury's terrifying short story "MARS IS HEAVEN",the first yarn by this great writer that I read.I was definitely hooked.From then on I've been reading almost all his SF&Horror stories and a good number of his novels(novels?).
So,I love this book and I warmly recommend it.

A biography of Bradbury, told in pictures
There's a point in this book where the author says "You have to be an amazing writer to inspire so many illustrations and paintings." And that's why Bradbury is so great. After reading a book like The Martian Chronicles, you can easily imagine what he was describing. And if you can draw or paint, you'll want to create those images on canvas.

That's why almost every piece of artwork in this book is so beautiful. Just take the Illustrated Man as an example. Each artist who was commissioned to create a cover for the book had the task of showing an almost-naked man covered in tattoos. But the tattoos had to show scenes from dozens of short stories. One artist made the Illustrated Man an obese, shirtless guy in a carnival sideshow. Another gave him technicolor cartoons across his back and shoulders, depicting roaring lions and men in spacesuits. The third image is the most famous --- a nude man with his back to the viewer, sitting, with all of the skin below his neck covered in images.

This approach is repeated throughout the book --- different artists interpret the most vivid images from Bradbury's best books and stories. Over a hundred paperback book covers are reproduced (including a few that I was obsessed with when I was ten years old), along with movie posters, paintings, movie stills, and comic book pages.

The text is just as good. This book serves as a biography of Ray Bradbury, tracing the arc of his career from science fiction author to short story writer for 'the slicks' to comic book writer, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Bradbury's relationship with EC comics is recounted through the correspondence between Bradbury and William Gaines. It's very interesting, especially when Bradbury catches Gaines stealing his stories and offers to write more for EC instead of suing.

If you're a Bradbury fan, you'll love this. It's the kind of book you'll pull off the shelf every month and flip through, just to marvel at all of the strange and beautiful images. If you don't know Bradbury's work, you'll still enjoy all of the artwork. Maybe the images will inspire you to read his books..

A Wonderful Volume
This treat of a book is unique in that it is not merely a collection of illustrations from Bradbury publications over the years, but seeks to document the whole spectrum of "visualizing" the rich prose of Mr. Bradbury, an almost impossible task!This includes films, stage productions, marginal doodles by Bradbury himself, books and films that inspired Bradbury in his early years, and much more - a rewardingly broad approach to crafting the book.
In addition wholeheartedly agreeing with the wonderful points noted by other reviewers, I would like to point out that the book features much rare material by Joseph Mugnaini, the definitive Bradbury artist, in the form of concept sketches for covers, stage backdrops, and some of the original paintings that inspired the Bradbury-Mugnaini partnership in the first place.The contribution of Mugnaini's works to Bradbury's success, as a visual carnival barker beckoning readers into Bradbury's world is tough to underestimate.
The book is beautifully printed, with one absolutely tragic exception - the reproduction of Charles Addams' original illustration for the story "Homecoming" is horrible!It is terribly blurry and there are some kind of liquid stains on the original work, which hung in the Bradbury home for many years.For comparison, look at the (reversed) reproduction used as the dust jacket for Bradbury's recent "From the Dust Returned" novel/collection.Just unfortunate that the one illustration botched - was the lone collaboration between two magnificent twentieth-century masters of the macabre.Still OVERWHELMINGLY worth owning however.

The must have coffee table book
This coffee table book is a must have for Bradbury fans.Full of pictures and illustrations of his various stories and books are interweaved with text written by friends and associates of Bradbury's throughout his professional carreer.The book spends a great deal of time on his personal correspondance with William Gaines (comic book publisher and later MAD magazine).The correspondance shows a literary master who was truly fond of comics,then considered a trash medium during the 1950's.The book also spends a good deal of time on notes by Francois Truffaut, the french cinema genious who filmed farhenheit 451.Bradbury is also shown as a man who loved Hollywood from the time he was a small boy.This book is a great addition to have, both for the written word and the beautiful artwork. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

While these are not Bradbury's best, even less than his best is excellent.
Some people classify Ray Bradbury as a science fiction writer, but to me he is first and foremost a fantasy writer that occasionally uses science fiction scenarios. This collection of stories reveals his powerful imagination, in one he invents a complete society where people only live a few days and there is even a story about simple imagination.
My favorite in this collection is "The Rocket Man", a story about a family where the husband/father is a rocketeer traveling between the planets. More than that, he is a man with an overpowering urge to engage in interplanetary travel. He loves his family dearly, but when he is on Earth for a few days he can no longer resist the siren cry of space. It is a simple story, yet wrapped up within it is the overwhelming human desire to explore and conquer new frontiers.
The seventeen stories in this collection are:

*) R is for rocket
*) The end of the beginning
*) The fog horn
*) The rocket
*) The rocket man
*) The golden apples of the sun
*) A sound of thunder
*) The long rain
*) The exiles
*) Here there be tygers
*) The strawberry window
*) The dragon
*) The gift
*) Frost and fire
*) Uncle Einar
*) The time machine
*) The sound of summer running

Bradbury has always been the writer that was able to keep me most spellbound with his stories. While these are not his best, even less than his best is excellent.

Classic tales
This is another book of short stories from the master writer Ray Bardbury.The shortest in the collection is three pages and the longest is forty-seven, but most are around ten pages.As the title suggests most of these stories are science fiction, but some are fantasy and some are about the magic of every-day life.In many stories there is an atmosphere of small-town-America, an America which seems to have been lost since the 1950's.Not surprisingly most of the tales have a copyright date somewhere in that decade, but this did not spoil the book for me at all.The text is much too well drafted to suffer from minor points like that.This book is ideal if you only occasionally have an hour, or half an hour, to spare in a busy life.This book will dazzle you for that short time and leave you feeling like you have had a short holiday in another world.

Classic tales
This is another book of short stories from the master writer Ray Bardbury.The shortest in the collection is three pages and the longest is forty-seven, but most are around ten pages.As the title suggests most of these stories are science fiction, but some are fantasy and some are about the magic of every-day life.In many stories there is an atmosphere of small-town-America, an America which seems to have been lost since the 1950's.Not surprisingly most of the tales have a copyright date somewhere in that decade, but this did not spoil the book for me at all.The text is much too well drafted to suffer from minor points like that.This book is ideal if you only occasionally have an hour, or half an hour, to spare in a busy life.This book will dazzle you for that short time and leave you feeling like you have had a short holiday in another world.

Classic tales
This is another book of short stories from the master writer Ray Bardbury.The shortest in the collection is three pages and the longest is forty-seven, but most are around ten pages.As the title suggests most of these stories are science fiction, but some are fantasy and some are about the magic of every-day life.In many stories there is an atmosphere of small-town-America, an America which seems to have been lost since the 1950's.Not surprisingly most of the tales have a copyright date somewhere in that decade, but this did not spoil the book for me at all.The text is much too well drafted to suffer from minor points like that.This book is ideal if you only occasionally have an hour, or half an hour, to spare in a busy life.This book will dazzle you for that short time and leave you feeling like you have had a short holiday in another world.

Classic tales
This is another book of short stories from the master writer Ray Bardbury.The shortest in the collection is three pages and the longest is forty-seven, but most are around ten pages.As the title suggests most of these stories are science fiction, but some are fantasy and some are about the magic of every-day life.In many stories there is an atmosphere of small-town-America, an America which seems to have been lost since the 1950's.Not surprisingly most of the tales have a copyright date somewhere in that decade, but this did not spoil the book for me at all.The text is much too well drafted to suffer from minor points like that.This book is ideal if you only occasionally have an hour, or half an hour, to spare in a busy life.This book will dazzle you for that short time and leave you feeling like you have had a short holiday in another world.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Bradbury's classic parable on the evils of censorship
I am teaching "Fahrenheit 451" as the example of a dsytopian novel in my Science Fiction class, although it is certainly one of the most atypical of that particular type of narrative discourse. Compared to such heavy weight examples as George Orwell's "1984," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," Yevgeny Zamiatin's "We," Ray Bradbury's imaginative meditation on censorship seems like light reading. But the delicious irony of a world in which firemen start fires remains postent and the idea of people memorizing books so they will be preserved for future generations is compelling. Of course, there have been more documented cases of "book burning," albeit in less literal forms, since "Fahrenheit 451" was first published in 1953, so an argument can be made that while all the public debate was over how close we were the Orwellian future envisioned in "1984," it is Bradbury's little parable that may well be more realistic (especially in terms of the effects of television).

The novel is based on a short story, "The Fireman," that Bradbury published in "Galaxy Science Fiction" in 1951 and then expanded into "Fahrenheit 451" two years later. However, those who have studied Bradbury's writings caw trace key elements back to a 1948 story "Pillar of Fire" and the "Usher II" story from his 1950 work "The Martian Chronicles." Beyond that, there is the historical record of the Nazis burning books in 1933. The story is of a future world in which everyone understands that books are for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden. Guy Montage is a fireman who has been happy in his work for ten years, but suddenly finds himself asking questions when he meets a teenage girl and an old professor.

"Fahrenheit 451" is not only about censorship, but also about the inherent tension in advanced societies between knowledge and ignorance. Reading this novel again I am reminded about Pat Paulsen's editorial on the old "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" (a series well acquainted with the perils of censorship) about how we might enjoy freedom of speech in this country but we do not enjoy freedom of hearing because "there is always the danger of something being said." Censorship, in practical terms, is the effort of those who do not want others to hear what they find offensive, for whatever reasons, basically because it leads to people thinking thoughts they do not want them to be thinking. Through the rambling diatribes of Captain Beatty, Bradbury makes this point quite clear to his readers.

Even though this is essentially a novella, Bradbury's work retains the charm of a short story. The recurring use of animal imagery throughout the story, the use of the mythic ideas of the salamander and the phoenix, make "Fahrenheit 451" more poetic than any other dystopian work. Even if it is predominantly a one note argument regarding censorship, it is impossible to deny that Bradbury makes a clear and convincing case for his position. Besides, there is something to be said for any work that insures that beyond the point at which water freezes the only other recognizable number on the Fahrenheit scale is the point at which book paper starts to burn. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great classic just as relevant today. for 1984 lovers also
My sis recommended this book and I must say I was impressed and would recommend all public schools make high school kids read this book as food for thought as they go out to shape the world. This book is just as relevant today if not moreso- as TV's take over our lives and being different or voicing opinion is being considered unpatriotic or made one viewed as an outcast. I couldn't help but keep rooting for the protagonist and definitely appreciated how the book ended. And it left me wanting more. It definitely makes you think about how we value material pleasures in life as the fire chief goes into his extended description of the fall of society and the creation of "Book burners". Our world is becoming so PC we are moving towards a world like that of the book in each day which is why I support the ACLU, boycott city hall on police state policies, and will NOT sacrifice my liberty when the government uses Terrorism as a scapegoat for scare tactics and control over citizens and I was one of the pedestrians running in downtown NYC on 9-11 when it came down. As our forefather said, Give me liberty or give me death.
fans of 1984 and Naked Lunch will love this one.

Even more relevant now than when first written
Farenheit 451 was first published in 1953, so as I started on my first reading of the book I wondered if it would feel dated. After finishing it, I've decided that this book is even more relevant today than when it was first written.

Farenheit 451 is set sometime in the future (Bradbury wisely chose not to set a specific date for his story), and is the story of Guy Montag, a professional book burner, or "fireman." In Montag's time, American society now focuses primarily on constant pleasure seeking without inhibitions of any kind. Intellectual pursuits such as reading or writing are strongly discouraged, and those found owning any banned piece of literature (which by this time includes almost any piece of literature) are punished by imprisonment, while their homes are burned with the offending books inside. It is a time of apathy and lawlessness, and most of the population spends almost their entire lives focused on vacuous entertainment which massages the minds of the masses into an intellectual sleep. Montag's contentment with this existence is disrupted one day when he meets a young girl, Clarrise, who engages him in a conversation that begins to awaken in him the desire for a more meaningful life. Ultimately, Montag rebels and finds himself a fugitive from the very society that has created him.

To be upfront, I will admit that I hate modern television, specifically the drivel of reality tv that consists of watching the antics of dysfunctional individuals in all their horrific glory. I will be the first to admit that I enjoy television shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica which actually seem to have a story driven plot, and are delightfully complex. Still, I am blown away by a recent statistic that states that the average American spends 7 hours a day watching television. At this point, you are probably wondering, what does television have to do with Farenheit 451? This is not a novel about censorship, although that certainly is present in the novel. Bradbury has stated that the novel is primarily an exploration of how the obsession with television and mass media can or will destroy our desire to read. I find Bradbury's idea of the future frightening, especially when I consider that so many of my own acquaintances can't even remember the last time they read a book for enjoyment. In fact, that is the reason I was primarily attracted to book blogging. I wanted to find a place to share my love of books with others, and I couldn't seem to fill that need in my local community.

I found the coda that Bradbury added in a later edition to be especially interesting. As I was listening, it was spooky when I considered how many aspects of the novel have an equivalent in our modern society. One example that jumps out to me is the "seashell" device that Montag's wife Mildred is wearing almost continuously throughout the novel. Bradbury later wrote:

"In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction."

This book is a classic, and it deserves to be. If you haven't ever read this book, or if it has been a while, give it a try. If nothing else, it will give you plenty to think about.

Good but flawed book
I read this book in high school, and I'm sure that it was assigned because it has a number of interesting ideas contained within it.However, it was written at the dawn of the nuclear age, and it is very dated.Many things that seemed plausible back then are simply established to be impossible now.Still, the book was so good, that I am constantly reminded about the ideas in it when I see the rise in "infotainment" and nightly celebrity worship shows (ET, Access, ...).I would recommend reading it as if you were living in the 1950s.If you do, you will be richly rewarded.

Great Idea but NOT an incredible book
I am a 10th grade teacher so I read all of the books that I will teach my students.One of these was Farenheit 451.I know it's a classic and I love Ray Bradbury but this book is famous more for the idea than the actual story.This is the type of book that you could discuss but not the type of book I would recommend for pleasure reading.Some of his other works and short stories I find much better than this including the one he references in the book, The Pedestrian.Ray Bradbury is great but don't read this book thinking that you will be completely engrossed from page one.However, if you want something to really think about and an idea that is incredibly interesting this is the ticket.

Dry leaves serve the fire
Just try to imagine how could be our world today with every book with a death sentence... it would be worst that it is today.
This is a terrific story, which comes from a desperate internal scream of liberty, `cause our freedom is made in the cements of the knowledge. Bradboury paints us a history perfect to be the worst nightmare ever; every detail was clearly study step by step, to gain us into a wonderful story that mede me feel at first horror and later a little bit of pain, just to thinkthat once the world not far enough was tried to get ruled by an enmey of the many expressions of thinking.

The main message of this history is to valuate and feel a posetion feeling of our information, but mainly of the imprent information, which it has been leaving behind by this generation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Master at the Height of his Powers
This is vintage Bradbury - no punk, obscenity, fantasy, horror or sex.Just beautiful, succinct, wonderfully constructed short stories that give new meaning to the term "American Genius".

The stories range in subject matter from religion to space to family to war but through it all Bradbury explores the meaning of being human in all its wondrous degrees.There is more poetry in this prose than in most English books of poetry. Every single story - I mean every one! - is excellent, thought provoking and haunting.What a writer!

one of his best short-story collections....
....I particularly liked "A Miracle of Rare Device."21 tales by the master of the imaginative. ... Read more